Some time ago, a philosopher on crack brought up a topic that has brought about much debate to this date. Sigmund Freud obsessed with sex, dolls, and his mother asked the world a simplistic question that demanded a non-simplistic answer; what do Women Want?
When asked what her prince charming would be a woman will say, ‘Easy.’ She will tell you, without a doubt, that the man must be a kind a synonym of caring. Nowhere, between the time in which she takes a deep breath to list his admirable qualities and the time where she pants with tiredness after listing them all, will she ever mention that she would like him to be a jerk.
Between McDreamy and McSteamy, most girls, without a blink of the eye, will choose McDreamy; the kind, sweet, successful, tall, dark and handsome male who (if you could not tell by the title that has been rightfully given to him) is dreamy; a true prince charming. He’s the one. He gives you that look with his steel, brown eyes that scream ‘keeper’. He makes you feel like you’re the only one in the room; nobody else exists; and no other woman for that matter. He gives you the butterflies, holds your coat for you while you slip your arms through the sleeves and delivers you a dozen red roses to your office. You become the object of his affection and the envy of all your friends, enemies and random women walking down the street glaring as they watch you link fingers. He, in your book of books, has aced the art of romance.
And soon, within a month or two of dating McDreamy, you’ll be planning the fairytale dream wedding, buying creamy paint for the white picket-fence of your dream home and buying a ten-pound book of baby names for the four to five dreamy children you’ll be having.
Yet the truth of the matter is that McDreamy, although seeming ‘all that’ on paper, never wins. Girls may try to deny this undeniable fact, but men, clever and observant as they are, have caught onto this irony. In movies, the good guy always wins. He wins against the villain, he wins recognition within his community and, in most circumstances, and he wins the girl. As for the girls watching, tears rolling down their cheeks and stuffing their cheeks with popcorn as they watch this happy ending unfold? Well, they couldn’t see the ending go any other way.
Moreover, we constantly remind ourselves that the movies aren’t reality and that same fact goes for the good guy. In reality, McDreamy never wins. He never wins against his villain, he may gain recognition within his community, but most importantly, the good guy never gets the girl. Before you get defensive and start making references to Grey’s Anatomy, I’d like to make my own reference to the same show. We know that McDreamy and McSteamy used to be best friends, and are now well on their way to repairing that relationship. McSteamy, who is completely the opposite of McDreamy, is a real McAsshole. His ridiculous good looks allow him to sleep with more women in a single month than we have fingers. He sexually harasses women in the hospital and enslaves you into retrieving his blueberry scone and cappuccino. This man has not mastered the art of romance, he constantly irritates you, and for the most part, you and your friends agree, he’s a real jerk.
Yet, we cannot possibly forget, that more women seem to fall into his bed than McDreamy’s. Women, despite knowing his relationship inconsistencies, hope with all their might, that they might be the one to tame the beast.
In reality, women only want McDreamy on paper. Thus what women say they go for and what women actually go for are two completely different things and rarely coincide. Women, whether or not we want to face it, fall head over heels in love with McSteamy. The truth is McAsshole always wins. Mcjerk always ends up on top, and the villain; sexy, arrogant and egotistical as he can be, conquers over our Prince Charming. Trust me ladies, he won’t be romantically saving you from the tallest building at the tallest tower on the highest mountain. He’ll seduce and snatch you away and then chain you to the walls of his own castle. This time, you won’t be able to get out, not because you can’t, but because you don’t want to. Instead of the sweet, loving kiss you’ve been dreaming about all your life, he gives you the hard, sultry, demanding one. Instead of picking up the phone to chat for two hours, he won’t be answering at all; he’ll probably at the bar, picking up another girl. All the while, you won’t be able to shake him off. Not for the life of you. If at this moment Simone De Beauvoir was alive and was reading this, she would most definitely object and bring up the fact that women are man dependent, they can never stand up for themselves and will never have the quality that a man would in the everyday society. She would also go on to say that a man would never want to be under a woman’s orders, despite all of these facts, this will only make a woman want a man more; crave his kisses more; desperate to make him fall in love with you more. Desperate to make him change into the man you know him to be. That man may not be any good at the art of romance, but he has definitely Phd’ed in the art of seduction. For now, that’s all he’ll give you, and as you lay in your bed crying for more than just his empty kisses, you know you can never leave him.
For some reason or another, women DON’T want McDreamy. They don’t WANT nice and kind, despite their insistence that they do. They don’t WANT prince charming to save them from that heaven-reaching tower. They want McJerk. They want McSteamy. Stats have shown that women are more likely to enter into the field of humanities than males. They need to know that they can save and also be saved. However, they still need to find the one. They need to feel special. So why on earth would a woman go after a guy who treats them like every other girl?
Only because knowing that they tamed the untameable beast makes them feel even more special than getting involved with the already tamed and potentially harmless cub. Knowing that they were the one who whipped them into boyfriend shape gives them more of a satisfaction than a man who is already boyfriend material. There is something excessively appealing in the knowledge that he only treats you with that kind of respect; looks at you with those eyes. However, dating McDreamy, as dreamy and perfect as he may seem, has probably been McDreamy all of his life. He has probably given that respect to all women and has probably looked at other women with those same eyes.
The illusion that we, women, are using our instincts as a humanitarian and saving a fallen angel from his potential downfall into hell gives us a sense of excitement not easily recognized by men. Pushing us away, makes us want to push harder to reach deep down inside and touch the heart made of steel we believe can eventually beat again. A friend recently mentioned that women, more than anything, feel special when a man reveals his fears, his weaknesses and his deepest darkest secrets. Especially if said man has a reputation for being stone cold on the outside. Knowing she’s the only one he felt comfortable enough to open up to makes her feel like the humanitarian most of us are yearning to be. However, the truth of the matter is men will never change. WE can never change them and as much as we wish we could, lying on our beds at night thinking about him and what we could do to change his terrible yet very attractive flaws that bring women to their knees, women need to accept the fact that a man will change for no one. He will always be a man. An existentialist would say that we must choose for ourselves how we act and through these choices and decisions a person becomes who they really are. maybe, just maybe, it is not our job to play the role of a caring humanitarian, trying desperately to cut open their chest with a scalpel and make their hearts beat again, but rather to accept that their flaws are what make them the men that they are.
If you still insist to tame the beast then maybe the beast isn’t what you need. Maybe what you need is, in fact, the cub that cares for you and allows you to care for him back.
What women generally want may not be the nice guy, the prince charming, the hero carrying her handkerchief in his breast pocket. That would be too easy. When it comes to life, we have constantly been reminded, is not that easy at all. We try to find the hard way, the difficult route to the land of happily ever after. What we really want is a beast we can tame. What we really want is to be a humanitarian and reform the infamous McSteamy into the dreamy McDreamy. We want to be Belle and her Beast who turns into the charming Prince after being bound by a sinful spell. We want to carry that burden of lifting the spell even if it risks our own sanity and the development of insomnia by his terrible habits.
It can therefore be concluded that, although ironic, a woman does not want a prince charming but rather to be the prince charming saving, not a damsel in distress, but a man who has fallen from the path of righteousness.
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